Doctors Give Brief Diagnosis : Jockey Undresses Los Angeles-Area Medical Professionals in Eye-Opening Magazine Ad
Get me a doctor, STAT.
Well, maybe not just any doctor. Turn to the double-spread ad on Page 60 of last week’s Sports Illustrated, and pick any one of the five heart-stopping medical professionals, all posed in surgical garb and underwear.
They’re kicking off Jockey’s latest advertising campaign, “Let ‘em know you’re Jockey.”
Of course, we at the Health section of the Los Angeles Times wouldn’t be a bit interested in this except that all the men are from Los Angeles County, and, of course, hmm, uh . . . you, the reader, must be served. Yeah, that’s right.
“It’s sort of an interesting role reversal,” said Mathias Schar, 29, a family practitioner from Los Angeles. “People are pretty intimidated in the doctor’s office . . . sitting around in their underwear.”
Schar was a little hesitant to answer the modeling call because of an incident when he was in medical school. A female doctor had been highly criticized for modeling underwear, “for sexualizing the role of the physician.”
This photo shoot, however, was just fun and cute, he said.
Still, some people (we have no idea who) find these guys so incredibly sexy that “Hard Copy” will be filming three of them tonight at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles. That’s where John Wesley Ruffin, 28, is a pediatrician in emergency transport. Ruffin is more comfortable talking about jumping into a helicopter to transport a critically ill child than he is about the modeling shoot. Still, he said, the shoot was more difficult than he had imagined.
Is becoming a sex symbol in the future?
“Nope, nope, nope. And I never expected to be,” said Ruffin.
A few of the men do model and act. One, in fact, Patrick Faucette, a physical therapist, has an agent who directs his interviews with the media.
Mario Cunha, 34, a dentist from Brazil, was out of the country as of press time. Cunha is studying for his U.S. certification.
Traig Trumbo, a 36-year-old chiropractor from Malibu, also acts and models, along with being a lifeguard in the summer. The hardest part of the shoot, he said, was the distraction from the real-life cowgirls who were waiting in the studio to be photographed next.
“Cowgirls were at the shoot, and they said, ‘They can’t be real doctors,’ ” said David Drescher, vice president of marketing and advertising at Jockey International.
The cowgirls, also from Southern California, are in Jockey ads in women’s magazines, the men in almost a dozen men’s magazines.
Jockey changed advertising agencies in September to Grey Advertising in New York, Drescher said. The ad was pitched as, “Just think ‘ER.’ Who wouldn’t want to see George Clooney in his underwear?” said Jan Egan, half of the creative duo that came up with the campaign.
The casting call was done in Los Angeles because of its many medical centers and the good odds of finding a group of physically fit doctors, Egan said.
The Los Angeles men had better enjoy their notoriety. On Friday, another campaign debuts in New York City with a half-block long billboard.
And you know how fickle ogling hearts can be.
